It’s not unusual for Iceage to obscure the narrative details of their songs. But when frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sings about catching “you like an ember falling down” on the opening track of their new album, he might as well be referring to the sparks of a new song that permeate the air when the band is in the studio. The more the Danish punks have pushed their sound forward since their 2011 debut New Brigade, the more days it’s taken them to record, with the last couple requiring – gasp – up to two weeks. Perhaps in reaction to the insularity of Rønnenfelt’s recent solo work, though, they returned to a speedier, raucous approach for For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, as if the ideas themselves were running for dear life while the quintet holed up in the middle of the woods, at the same studio where they made 2014’s Plowing Into the Field of Love. Rønnenfelt’s language may remain gory and rugged, but the band’s immediacy matches their gloriously lovestruck nature. You can’t fault them for scrambling to capture it fast.
1. Ember
Xylophone and electric guitar briefly interlock before the rambunctious assault that fires up For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, anchoring in a rhythm section that sounds remarkably in flux even as it holds tight. The declaration that unwinds the chorus, “I love you in an ominous way,” is the album’s first shining example of combustible yearning. It’s only the start, of course.
2. Match Head Girl
Case in point: “Make the world combust with every strike,” Rønnenfelt belts out at the end of the chorus, as if sneakily erasing the ego of “my world.” Though matching his gleeful abandon with loose instrumentation, ‘Match Head Girl’ is one of the album’s most dynamic cuts, as drummer Dan Kjær Nielsen and bassist Jakob Tvilling Pless seem to respond to the narrator’s whims in real time. When he commands the band to “rise a flood miraculously,” the guitars grow torrential, strings emerge. It may be a song about someone swimming in your arteries metaphorically, but Iceage make it feel as visceral as ever.
3. The Weak
The band leans into rockabilly-inflected punk on ‘The Weak’, which feels like a breath of fresh air despite its morbid imagery (“My little sparrow used to sing/ Teared its feathers on the bars, and I cut its wings/ Crushing its spirit might just help the lyrics” – I mean, Jesus). The “Life is for the weak” hook is memorably anthemic, but the highlight is a pennywhistle solo that injects the song with a real off-kilter charm.
4. No Fear
The theme of intravenous desire extends to ‘No Fear’, with Rønnenfelt singing, “In our morning of a million suns/ Course through my veins undressed.” But unlike ‘Match Head Girl’, the track’s clean guitar and roiling bassline suggest a morning-after soberness that stirs the singer’s poetry in half a dozen different directions: dizzied, blessed, gentle, reverent.
5. Salve for Every Sore
Switching up the tempo with rollicking drums, ‘Salve for Every Sore’ stands restlessly in the pit of infatuation, pushing the idea of heavenly love to the conviction that “heaven harbours envy for us.” Yet for all its divine vocabulary, Rønnenfelt is aching to communicate the intimate feeling of tangled bodies seeming to relieve persistent soreness. Seeming because Rønnenfelt sings “I get the impression you’re a salve for every sore,” though his voice betrays total confidence.
6. mother-of-pearl
Don’t let the lowercase title fool you: the bounciest song on the album – its centerpiece, even – is about the shitty circumstances surrounding a working girl’s pregnancy; “circumstances” being a euphemism for men, from the fresh-out-of-prison father to the narrator convinced he knows what she wants: “not feeling like foeticide,” “knocked up and hormonal.” You hope she gets away from it all.
7. Tender Blades
The band fittingly coils around a piercing groove, cutting a little deeper than the generally more lighthearted material on For Love. The subject, though, is still the extremes that love drives us towards: the fantasies we’d get high on, the God complex, and of course, the intersection of pleasure and pain, which Rønnenfelt relays in evocative terms: “It’s in your hammering of lilies where there would be nails.” There’s no question in his mind about whether it’s worth it, only a desperation to know the frenzy’s mutual.
8. 1835
The band remains locked in place, seemingly unbothered by Rønnenfelt’s grim reflections on mortality, but ‘1835’ feels more serviceable than a truly substantial piece of the record.
9. Star
For Love’s brightest aspirations are channeled into ‘Star’ – it’s hard to imagine many rock songs matching its brilliance this year. In the context of the album, though, it scans as an outpouring of desire after a trio of songs that shift focus, like ten minutes away from one’s object of affection that seem tantamount to death. And not a mortal but a celestial kind, so much so that when Rønnenfelt sings, “Every inch of my earth and sky/ You can occupy/ Cover me entirely,” the Earth appears small, merely a servant to the heavens. That’s how good sequencing elevates an already fantastic single.
10. Lifetime
Though powered by a classic chord progression, there’s a convulsive energy to ‘Lifetime’, which is fodder for Rønnenfelt’s insatiable poetry: “Feral moon, oh, how you claw through time/ My lone diluted friend,” he begins. Nielsen tumbles and crashes through every cymbal as the singer keeps gasping for air, capturing a ramshackle shimmer.
11. Holy Water
The song ratchets up the band’s wonky interplay as lively guitar undulates around a knotty beat; you wonder why it wasn’t a single.
12. True Blue
The album keeps its biggest outlier for last, but the track’s disarmingly shoegazey guitars befit the rapturous conclusion. You could imagine ‘True Blue’ originating as a Rønnenfelt solo cut, but the band bends it to their will here. “And just you wait, there’s worlds to unravel,” he bellows, keeping the for us silent. You can still hear it, though, reverberating through the band’s ceaseless momentum.
